Triple Triad

Just when I thought I didn't want to go on living anymore, my eye caught some promising looking DVDs from the pirated DVD vendor across the Law school. Nothing like watching an awesome/bad/awesomely bad movie to cheer you up. Get a load of this.

Its Dragon Age: Redemption, a fan film based on the popular gaming franchise of the same name. I believe this is going to be good. I like gaming and I like Dragon Age even after the game developer took a giant shit on it. It also stars Felicia Day who, I am told, is a "gamer girl" with actual credibility. Next up...

It's fucking The Samurai of Ayothaya! Now get this, the story is about some Japanese guy named Yamada who is captured by Siamese warriors but instead of getting executed, he learns to respect the culture of his captors and fights for them instead against the Japanese. The box proudly proclaims that it's "The Last Samurai meets Ong Bak 2!" I got mixed feelings. On the one hand, I thought The Last Samurai was complete bullshit. On the other hand, Ong Bak 2 and the entire Ong Bak series for that matter, was pretty intense with people caving each others skulls with their elbows. Is this movie based on true historical events? I don't know but if it's anything like The Last Samurai, historical accuracy comes second to people getting whacked good.

And last but certainly not the least, we have this awesome looking movie from India. The last Indian movie I saw was ball-bustingly awesome so I bet this one is too. Drum roll!

Ra.One! Apparently, its a big fucking deal in India. Its got action and CGI and shit, It's India's answer to Hollywood. Its got merch, video games and even had its own Nvidia graphics card with box art to boot. I mean, look at the goddamn poster! The dude is all buff and carrying the helpless babe dressed in red in his arms while wearing a shirt made of lightning as the rest of society is blown away by awesomeness behind them.

What is Ra.One all about? Well, a good friend of mine, who is also well versed in bad/awesome movies, says it's the Indian Iron Man.

That's good enough for me.

Robot (Part 2)

When we last left Chitti, he was just kissed on the cheek by Sana. This triggers interesting feelings for him and triggers another outrageous music video! Let's dance!

Tensions rise between Chitti and Doc. Chitti's feelings for Sana becomes obvious and Sana even tells him that love between woman and machine just ain't natural. It's not meant to be. Chitti is distraught. Dr. Bohra tries to take advantage of this by telling Chitti that Doc doesn't care and that Chitti should hand over his neural programming schema to him. Chitti, however, decides to be a bro and refuse. Chitti remains loyal to Doc anyway despite everything.

The next day, Chitti appears before the Indian military for an evaluation. But wait, I thought Chitti failed the initial evaluation with the Institute? Ah. whatever. Instead of demonstrating his combat prowess, Chitti deliberately fails the exam by reciting poetry about how beautiful Sana is and how war is bad. The Doc is humiliated. Doc becomes angry and hacks Chitti into pieces in his lab with an axe. He exclaims how making Chitti was a mistake. Chitti retorts that he didn't ask to be built or to have feelings. I dunno but I thought this scene was pretty powerful. Chitti looked so sympathetic and Chitti is a robot! The Doc looked like an asshole. Doc is supposed to be the good guy?

So we are treated to a scene where Dr.Bohra negotiates with a German speaking white man about the purchase of a robot army. The funny thing is, Dr.Bohra has a demonstration video showing his robots doing things like shooting civilians, planting car bombs and assassinating presidents. OK, OK, I get it. This guy wants to use technology for evil. He eventually learns of Chitti's fate and retrieves Chitti from the dump. Chitti begs to be fixed and to live and love again. Bohra obliges him but not before installing a little chip that turns you evil. Again, its obvious how evil he is. The chip is colored red and its specifically called a "destruction chip" meant to teach Chitti...to destroy. Looks like Dr.Vaseegaran is in trouble.

Oh no wait, Doc is with Sana running from a guy with a blade in a beach in some kind of comedic scene. Also, there's another music video with ABSOLUTELY NO RELATION to the plot as far as I can tell. They're on a mountain dancing with some tribals. Who knows? I guess life is good without Chitti ruining the chutney.

Chitti crashes Doc's wedding. To drive home the fact that Chitti is now evil, Chitti sports a white skunk stripe on his hair and he shoots abunch of people. After the a crazy awesome chase scene (which I can't find on youtube) Chitti takes Sana to his pleasure palace where Chitti is building his very own robot army. He killed Dr.Bohra too when he got in he way. He also threatens her with rape and has plans to create some kind of evolved "robo-sapien" baby through artificial insemination. Yeah, I don't want to think about it either.

Anyway Doc manages to sneak in the robot base and recue Sana but things get a little messy. The Indian Army confronts Chitti and his army in what is the grand climax of the film. I must say, they spared no expense in the action. Its so over the top and ridiculous that my mind still can't absorb it. I won't spoil what happens but lets just say the "Holy Shit" levels break the scale.

Anyway, doc manages to install a virus or whatever and removes the chip and deactivates the clones. Doc is in court pending capital punishment for his creation when Chitti tells the court that he is technically material evidence and not a person or a witness and can prove Doc is innocent. I don't think I've heard of such jurisprudence. Chitti proves Dr.Bohra was behind it all. Doc gets off the hook but the court orders Chitti be deactivated indefinitely. Tearfully, Doc, Sana and the government allow Chitti to deactivate himself. The film ends in a poignant note with Chitti in a museum fifty years into the future. When a child asks why he was deactivated, he replies, "I started to think."

How did I find the movie? Well, let's put it this way. It had everything and that everything was served with extra servings and dressing. The acting was overacting, the drama was over dramatic, the action scenes were so over the top etc. It's not a bad movie. I thought it was good though off putting. Sometimes there was just too much on the plate you know? The tone was weird too. It started lighthearted then got pretty deep then all screwed up and dark in the end. I dunno what else to say so I'll cop out and use a stupid quantitative scale. 7.5 out of 10.

It was fun.

Robot (Part 1)

Robot AKA "Endhiran" is a Tamil film by S. Shankar. This is an Indian film so I guess its safe to call it a Bollywood picture. Last time I checked, Tamil was a province in southern India. Anyway, its science fiction. Its a movie about a scientist named Dr. Vaseegaran who creates an incredibly human looking android. Hilarity ensues, at least, for a while. Let me break it down. Spoilers incoming needless to say.

Dr. Vaseegaran has been busy researching and building his own android apparently without any funding from any government or entity. With the help of his two comic relief assistants, he creates "Robot"...the titular robot. That's his name. Robot. Let's move on.

Eventually we learn the doctor has a girlfriend named Sana (played by the beautiful Aishwarya Rai) who he's been ignoring for a while due to his work. She whines about it. Gee, building a super advanced humanoid, the likes the world has never seen, must be hard work. Doc brings the robot home to show it to his parents. Doc asks his mom to name the robot. She names it Chitti Babu. I snicker for five minutes. She then asks Chitti to "throw on" the TV. Of course, Chitti can't understand slang and smashes the flat screen to a thousand pieces. Oh, I get it. He's a robot! He takes things literally! Ha ha! Later on, Chitti winds up slashing a corrupt cop who asked him for a "cut"! Ha ha! But seriously, that was a little screwed up.

The doctor confronts Sana and they talk about their relationship. Some sappy romance scene happens and they make up I guess. Then, all of a sudden and without any warning whatsoever, the scene inexplicably shifts to the middle of a desert oasis where the doctor is strumming a guitar. He and Sana sing and dance while the winds blow around them and the camera flies around. Oh yeah, Indian cinema baby! Her costume even changes a few times.

Doc brings Chitti to the "International Robotic Conference" and everyone is impressed except Dr. Bohra, Dr. Vaseegaran's mentor. Immediately you could tell Dr. Bohra is a villain. He looks like a complete asshole. He's envious. It turns out that Bohra had been attempting to create androids of his own but his pupil had succeeded where he had failed. He attempts to ask Chitti to reveal its secret neural programming scheme but fails. Also, Dr. Bohra's androids look like assholes too so you know this guy is trouble. His androids have mean faces with angry brows and a gunmetal black color scheme. He might as well wear a shirt with the word "villain" written on it.

Anyway, Sana wants to "borrow" Chitti for a while and Doc agrees to trust her with an extremely advanced machine for some reason. Hilarity ensues. A music video/montage of how awesome Chitti is commences. Chitti can do anything. He can cook a five star breakfast, clean up the house in a minute, take care of those jerks from the male dormitory and etc. He even helps Sana cheat on her exams using holographic imagery! She get's away with it too! Damn! There's also an over the top action scene where Chitti saves Sana from a band of thugs on a train. It's awesome.

Doc prepares Chitti for his evaluation in some kind of board for AI research. Dr. Bohra is there looking pissed. So far so good until Dr. Bohra tests Chitti. Doc tells Chitti to follow Bohra's orders so Chitti walks backwards, runs around, jumps to and fro, attempts to stab Doc - oh shit! Chitti was nearly "tricked" into stabbing Doc. Dr. Bohra smugly snorts that Chitti cannot distinguish good from bad and friend from foe so he cannot be used by the military. Doc goes home disappointed and the board walks out. Jeez, you'd think the fact Chitti even exists would be a milestone. These people are hard to impress.

On the way home there's a fire downtown. Doc orders Chitti to save people. Chitti saves a few but something unfortunate happens. He saves a girl who was naked in a bath tub without clothing her first. Now, call me crazy, but I think saving your life is more important than being caught naked in public but I dunno, it could be a cultural thing. The girl is so shocked at being naked, she runs away and gets smacked by a truck. Everyone is mad at Chitti for saving her goddamned life in such an insensitive manner. Geez. Anyway, the Doc decides that he's going to teach Chitti morals. He's gonna teach a robot morality. Wow.

Doc goes over some charts on human relationships, tells Chitti to memory scan psychology books and even installs some pheromone detecting hardware but it seems Chitti can't seem to understand. Now personally, I think that its impossible to teach a machine emotion. Emotions can't be broken down into a program. Life is much more complex than - a what the hell, Chitti gets struck by magical lightning. Problem solved.

Chitti learns to feel which is quite amazing. Chitti manages to save a baby too. Sana is so impressed by this, she kisses Chitti and you know where this is going. The villain even remarks, "The story is just beginning!"

The movie goes into intermission and that's all for now.

Robot

Today I was planning on writing about the movie Robot, ("Endhiran" in the original Tamil) an Indian movie. However I realized that this is...an Indian movie which means a lot of song and dance numbers of varying plot relevance and a long run time. Movies are all-day affairs in India so I'm gonna take a break halfway and continue watching it later.

Hopefully I can write a post about it tomorrow.

Ultimate Action

Forget about The Expendables. This is the greatest action scene ever filmed.